Author: PGC Administrator

Read chapter in full: biblegateway.com/passage/?version=ESV&search=Ecclesiastes+010

 

Ecclesiastes 10 (ESV)

1 Dead flies make the perfumer’s ointment give off a stench;
so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor.
² A wise man’s heart inclines him to the right,
but a fool’s heart to the left.
³ Even when the fool walks on the road, he lacks sense,
and he says to everyone that he is a fool.
⁴ If the anger of the ruler rises against you, do not leave your place,
for calmness will lay great offenses to rest.

 

REFLECTION:

Here the dead flies represent ignorance, and the ointment symbolizes wisdom and honor. The literal translation from biblical manuscripts is: “A little folly outweighs wisdom and honour.” This is not to belittle wisdom and honour, but to emphasize that the destructive power of a little folly could outweigh the positive effects of wisdom and honor. When a fool appears among a group of wise people, this little folly can be enough to corrupt the entire group. In Verse 2 Solomon is still talking about the comparison of wisdom and ignorance, which has nothing to do with the position of the human heart. In Israeli tradition, the right side is regarded as the place of honor and the most protected place, and the left side is relatively secondary compared to the right side. Solomon means to say that wise people put their thoughts and minds on the most important things in life, while fools put the cart before the horse and only value the things of secondary importance. Do you understand what the most important thing in your life is? May you put your mind and thought on God’s way of life, meditate on God’s words all day long, follow God’s way, and become a wise and blessed person.

 

PRAYER:

Ask God to enlighten you so that you can discern what is important, what is secondary, and what is even harmful and useless in the things you are doing now. Ask God to give you the courage to repent and completely abandon the worldly values, and live a life of heavenly wisdom based on God’s words.

 

HYMN:

Better Is One Day – youtu.be/ndVRcqziKWA

 

Read chapter in full: biblegateway.com/passage/?version=ESV&search=Ecclesiastes+009

 

Ecclesiastes 9 (ESV)

⁷ Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do.

⁸ Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head.

⁹ Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. ¹⁰ Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.

 

REFLECTION:

Is Solomon in these verses encouraging carpe diem? No, Solomon realized that everyone would die, and that everything in the future would be in the hands of God, so he advised us not to worry about tomorrow, and to enjoy the life and rich provision of God. He may be criticizing those who are deliberately accumulating money and are not willing to enjoy the joy of life. Just like people nowadays who are caught in fierce competition, and live in anxiety and worries. Solomon told us that God created us to experience the joy of life in God’s presence. Because our future is completely in God’s hands, we should enjoy all the gifts given by God and seek the God of giving. When Solomon said that there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol (v.10), he is not preaching a kind of atheism in which people die the way a lamp goes out. He is comparing the situation in this life and the situation after death but before resurrection. He advises us to take a good grasp of this life and experience the joy of being with God through hard work. When we pass away, we will not have the opportunity to change anything we did when we were alive. Old Testament believers had a very vague concept about resurrection. This concept was fully revealed only after Jesus was resurrected from the dead.

 

PRAYER:

Pray for God to remove your worries about tomorrow so that you can enjoy all the abundance that God has given today, including material and spiritual abundance. Pray for God to strengthen your faith and make you understand that your future is under His protection. God has even counted your hair, and not one hair will fall to the ground without His permission.

 

HYMN:

Because He Lives (Amen) – youtu.be/PBvU7arNhQs

 

Read chapter in full: biblegateway.com/passage/?version=ESV&search=Ecclesiastes+008

 

Ecclesiastes 8 (ESV)

⁵ Whoever keeps a command will know no evil thing, and the wise heart will know the proper time and the just way. ⁶ For there is a time and a way for everything, although man’s trouble lies heavy on him. ⁷ For he does not know what is to be, for who can tell him how it will be? ⁸ No man has power to retain the spirit, or power over the day of death. There is no discharge from war, nor will wickedness deliver those who are given to it. ⁹ All this I observed while applying my heart to all that is done under the sun, when man had power over man to his hurt.

 

REFLECTION:

These verses clarify the “proper time” and “just way” of life, and they have far-reaching inspiration for us. Everyone has 24 hours a day, but Solomon tells us that life is not only faced with the “time” that goes by every day, there is also “proper time” in life. Time is different from proper time. Proper time is the opportunity we grasp in the physical time we spend. Jesus often said in the world: “My time has not yet come…” (John 7:6), indicating that everything, including the accomplishment of God’s plan of salvation, has a timing. People have expectations, but God also has His plans and actions. We should have heavenly wisdom to obey God’s plan. Only in this way can we be blessed by God. This is the “just way” of our life. This is actually a tug-of-war between our personal will and God’s sovereignty. Unless we can understand the difference between time and proper time, and aim at the time when God manifests His glory, we are probably just passively tolerating and falsely expecting God to match our pace with emotions of dissatisfaction, doubt, and puzzlement. We should understand that God’s thoughts are higher than ours, and that His will is always the best and perfect. If God wants you to wait for a long time with a pure heart on something that is very important to you, do you have the faith to obey Him?

 

PRAYER:

Pray for God to give you more spiritual wisdom and firmer faith, so that you can gradually become a person who is willing and able to wait with a pure heart; pray for God to enlighten you so that you can see that He has made everything beautiful in its time. God will surely have a beautiful arrangement for your life, far more abundantly than all that you ask or think.

 

HYMN:

With All I Am – youtu.be/iTkiCBT0yQs

 

Read chapter in full: biblegateway.com/passage/?version=ESV&search=Ecclesiastes+007

 

Ecclesiastes 7 (ESV)

²⁰ Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.

²¹ Do not take to heart all the things that people say, lest you hear your servant cursing you. ²² Your heart knows that many times you yourself have cursed others…

²⁷ Behold, this is what I found, says the Preacher, while adding one thing to another to find the scheme of things— ²⁸ which my soul has sought repeatedly, but I have not found. One man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I have not found. ²⁹ See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.

 

REFLECTION:

Even Solomon, the wisest man in the world, admits that it is extremely difficult to be truly wise in action and thoughts. He emphasized that no matter how much we know, there are always many mysteries that cannot be understood. Moreover, he has already come to the same conclusion as Paul: None is righteous, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom. 3: 10, 23). Does Solomon think in verse 27 that a woman cannot be an upright (wise and good) person? No, because he compared wisdom to a responsible woman in Proverbs. His point is to say that almost no man or woman is upright before God, not that women are more dishonest than men. During his search and investigation, he found that goodness and wisdom are difficult to find among men and women. Even in his cultural background, men have the opportunity to receive education and women do not, but the result is the same. So Solomon meant to say: I hope to find one person who is upright in the eyes of God among a thousand people. However, I can actually find even less than this! God created humans for them to live upright lives and act justly. Instead, they turned away from God and turned to their own way, and finally went to destruction.

 

PRAYER:

Pray for God to enlighten you and increase your strength, so that you can do your best to be upright and righteous in all aspects of life, and not deviate from the path God has commanded. At the same time, pray for God to give you a humble heart so that you can see your own filth and weaknesses, understand that no one in the world can be justified before God by deeds. Ask God to forgive your transgressions so that the power of Christ may rest upon you.

 

HYMN:

Purify My Heart – https://youtu.be/7qCdr5FEXic